Bringing Something We Must Learn
An Essay
AN: In 11th grade, I was given an assignment to write an essay about a singular moment that changed the way I see the world forever. This is what I turned in.
Many of my childhood memories consist of me being that kid: the one who was always sitting alone at lunch, who had to work with the one other kid in class who nobody liked, and who even five-year-olds couldn't resist making fun of. We all know that kid; the different kid, the weirdo. The social hierarchy of school was fully formed by the end of kindergarten, and my place was set. For most of my early years, it didn't bother me much. I was still fooled by the comforting mom statement: "Don't worry, honey. They're just jealous." However, it didn't take long for those reassuring words to do nothing but infuriate me. Nothing about that statement was true. It was an empty promise.
As adolescence approached, the angst hit hard and fast: I'm too different. No one will ever love me. I'm going to die alone with cats. All the other kids are so popular, and I'm completely invisible. I began to fear there wasn't a place for me in this world. I was bitter and cynical, even as an eleven-year-old. In fact, I had learned to despise people my own age so much that on my eleventh birthday, I decided to "become an adult." I told most people I knew that I was now a grown up and they had to treat me as such. It wasn't true, obviously, but I was ashamed to connect myself to my own generation. These are just a couple of thethoughts and anxieties that plagued my days and kept me awake at night for a length of time that I accepted would be perpetual.
I attended a regular public middle school, and for the most part, every day was awful. Adults always noticed me. I was "wise beyond my years" and "incredibly dedicated and passionate" about the things I so obviously cared about. There must have been three kids that I even considered acquaintances. I felt animosity towards everyone else. It was their fault I didn't belong anywhere.
In sixth grade, one of my teachers told us she was going to show us a musical called Wicked. She said it was the backstory of The Wizard of Oz, that it was about the witches. I was immediately intrigued. The Wicked Witch wasn't evil? She was just misunderstood? Through the three days we spent talking about the show and watching clips, my intrigue transformed into adoration. But it wasn't gradual. My love for musical theatre came and smacked me upside the head like a brick. I began to see the light at the end of a dark tunnel that beforehand, I had no idea possessed an end.
In the next few years, I found myself discovering other musicals with inspirational messages: Hairspray, Into the Woods, and RENT, just to name a few. As much as I held on to these other beautiful pieces, there was nothing that brought me the same peace, the same overwhelming, cathartic feeling that Wicked did. Even though I had never seen it live, video clips and interviews left me with a smile on my face and tears in my eyes every single time. Wherever I went, the songs and characters covered me in a protective blanket that no power in this world, good or evil, big or small, could penetrate. I walked around in a constant state of euphoria. Maybe the world thought I wasn't worth much, that I was different and useless, but the Wicked Witch of the West (or Elphaba, which is her name) was my friend, and I could ask for no better role model.
In the fall of 2010, my mother announced we were taking a trip to New York City. My level of excitement was inestimable. By the time July came around, I was more than ready to finally see the musical that had so drastically changed the way I lived my life. Driving into the city from New Jersey was an experience in itself. I had lived in Long Island until I was seven, but I had never been to Manhattan. I was hyper aware of the sights and sounds that I was experiencing: bridges, taxi cabs, billboards, people. I'd never been so overwhelmed in such a good way. As we got closer and closer to the Gershwin Theatre, I felt goosebumps and my heart was pounding in my chest. I knew what to expect, but I also didn't have any idea of what I was going to experience that day.
I was sitting in the house of the theatre with thousands of other Wicked fans. Some had seen the show dozens of times, some people had, like me, only seen videos and listened to the soundtrack, but regardless of the amount of Wicked experience this audience had had, we were all there for the same reason: to have a life-changing experience. No matter how long a show has been playing on Broadway (Wicked has been on Broadway for more than a decade), you can never see the same show twice. We were all about to see something organic, new, and unadulterated. We were a community expecting to view and hear pure beauty. What I got, in my opinion, is more than I could have even thought to ask for.
Do you know that feeling when something is happening to you, and before it's even finished happening, you know your life will never be the same again? I cannot even describe the intensity of this feeling I was experiencing during the show. After Act 1, I couldn't even get up to use the bathroom. The echoes of the closing notes - "-and nobody in all of Oz, no Wizard that there is or was is ever gonna bring me down! Ahhh!" - repeated, reverberated inside my head, inside my heart, inside my veins: peace. It was a type of peace that not even video clips could inspire inside me. I was in awe, and I stared at the closed curtain with reverence for the entire fifteen minute intermission. I'm not sure I blinked. Even before I saw it live, I knew the show incredibly well, and I was familiar with the emotional rollercoaster that was about to ensue in the second part of the musical. I couldn't wait.
Throughout the second act, I made a concerted effort to mentally prepare myself for the second to last number, "For Good", in which Glinda and Elphaba meet for the last time, and tell each other what the other has meant to her in their friendship. Glinda opens with a verse explaining what she thinks their relationship has meant : "I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn, and we are lead to those who help us most to grow, if we let them, and we help them in return." Elphaba replies to her, and the actress almost always has tears rolling down her cheeks: "It well may be that we will never meet again in this lifetime, so let me say before we part: so much of me is made of what I learned from you. You'll be with me like a handprint on my heart." The two women end the song in similes of things that are changed by their interaction with other beings and objects, erupting into a crescendo of words and music and emotion. I have never been able to hear that song and not relate it to my relationship with Wicked itself. Sitting in that packed theatre, witnessing two superhumanly talented women belt out the song with such raw emotion, was definitely not an exception to that rule. By the time the finale came along, I could barely see the people in the row in front of me; the tears were cascading down my face like a deluge of rain escaping from the clouds of my eyes. I wasn't sad though. I was happier than I'd ever been.
That day, that theatre, clutching my mother's hand like a lifeline, was the first time my existence ever felt right. There had been times where I'd come close to finding a place where my presence made sense, but I'd never actually felt that self-acceptance, that contentment. For the first time, I knew that I was meant to be exactly where I was and the entire world suddenly fell into place.
The endless documents inside my head had always been so cluttered, so disorganized. They contained information, instructions on how I was to live my life. Most of these were quite unnecessary, and intuitively, I knew this, but something in my mind made me ignore logic. After I saw Wicked, these needless papers hit the shredder, and the few that were actually helpful to my life were filed away in neat, organized boxes to be referenced at a later date when needed, and only when needed.
One of the most important things I learned from seeing Wicked is not something that can be witnessed, it's not even something that I notice on a day-to-day basis. It's even more rudimentary than that. I learned that I have a place of my own, a place where everything makes sense. Whenever I feel out of place, when I'm somewhere in which I don't belong, I can remind myself that I have been somewhere that I do belong. It doesn't matter that there is almost one thousand miles between me and New York City on any given day. Animals who live in the desert don't need to know that an oasis is close, just that there is one, and that in time, they will arrive there. A thousand miles is nothing compared to the distance I felt from the world before I found Wicked. And even if it's not a place in which I can spend much time within the foreseeable future, I am always there. My oasis is everywhere I go because the lessons I have learned from being a fan of Wicked and musical theatre in general are ubiquitous. I am reminded of them everywhere I go and in everything I do.
I have had the privilege of seeing my favorite musical live twice, once that first time on Broadway, and once at Nashville's TPAC (Tennessee Performing Arts Center). The second time was just as amazing as the first, but my experience with it was different. I no longer needed to be healed. What I needed that day was to see the show to which I owed so much. It was that simple, and I got what I asked for. It had been two years since I'd seen it on Broadway and I was somewhat afraid it wouldn't affect me the same way it did the first time. I was right; it was different, but because this experience was one of thanks and not one where I was attempting to gain a new perspective, it was better.
All that said, the cathartic relief I had felt the first time I saw the show was just as intense the second time. To this day, there is nothing in the world that can calm me down and center me the way Wicked can and does, even if I'm just listening to the inspirational power song, "Defying Gravity", on my iPod. I have searched my beliefs, worldly and existential, in order to fathom why this musical has had such a deeply profound effect on me, more poignant than any other pain or joy I have experienced, and I have come up with an explanation that might possibly begin to do the job.
Mark Twain said, "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." I had a moment in my life where I thought, "Yep, this is right." We all have. My moment was when I saw Wicked; it consisted of a series of several realizations about who I was and who I wanted to be. I knew from that day on, what the world thought of me was a moot point. When you reach the point in your life where your purpose is understood, there is no doubt about it. My job was to do what Elphaba failed to do. She wanted to change the world, but the world ended up changing her. I knew in the moments after the curtain call, when the theatre was quiet-not silent, but quiet- that I was born to make a difference. I didn't know the specifics; I didn't feel the need to know. All I needed to know what that I was meant for something, that my oasis was out there. Whenever I think of this particular epiphany, my favorite quote from Wicked immediately permeates my mind: I'm through accepting limits 'cause someone says they're so. Some things I cannot change, but 'till I try, I'll never know.
All of this has exponentially changed the way I look at life, but there is one thing that I learned from my Wicked experience that trumps all the others. It's not from the musical, but its source material, the original Oz books, musical, and movie. My being lost was not the fault of the world around me. It was in my head. I was playing mind games with myself. I learned that what I got from Wicked was something that I had to consciously receive. I had the power to find my place all along, and when I did find it, I knew the quest was worth everything I'd experienced-because there really is no place like home.
A/N: Hey guys! I hope you liked my essay. I thought this would be a good forum to exchange stories of what Wicked has meant to us over the years.